Kapitan Ri: a review

A review of the a short story Kapitan Ri, by Chon Kwangyong (1962)

As anyone who studies Korean history for the shortest amount of time finds out, the division of Korea is but one tragedy in a line of unbroken hardships dating to the end of the 19th century, when a declining kingdom was forced into a pseudo-vassalage with the Chinese empire. In 1910, Korea was annexed by Japan; in WWII occupied by the Russians, and afterwards fell to civil war and American influence, and the division that now stands to this day.

Thus, for fifty years or more Koreans lived with little sense of national sovereignty. Children were raised to speak Japanese, and professionals gave preference to Japanese officials who controlled their life. How did they live and survive? It's a complicated answer. Now, I'm not an expert by any means of Korean literature (or history). But there is probably no short story which dramatizes the first fifty years of the 20th century Korean condition better than Kapitan Ri, by Chon Kwangyong.

The title character is Yi Inguk, M.D., a surgeon who has made a comfortable living working in the Japanese clinics. He gives preference to people who can pay, which means throwing out dissidents and poor who resist Japanese rule. On admission, 'His examination of a new patient began with an inquiry over his ability to pay...' followed by questions about the disease.

In these early pages, Yi Inguk is an unsympathetic, even satirical character, a privileged doctor driven by money and not ashamed of his conciliation, a profiteer of the Japanese occupation. Later, he angers Korean dissidents when he turns one of their leaders from his clinic, and it is not until the end of the second world war, with his being held prisoner by Russians, that we gain a measure of sympathy for Yi Inguk.

But Yi Inguk is a doctor, and when this comes to the attention of his Russian captors his skills are suddenly useful to the new regime yet again. He is pulled from prison and put to use in the clinic, and eventually allowed to resume his privileged life. He even regains his most important possession, a pocketwatch given to him by the Japanese as a sign of their appreciation.

It is hard not to be sympathetic to Yi Inguk. He is not a political creature, but one who merely wants to survive (and thrive). Perhaps he is a product of the forces which shaped modern Korea, and of a culture which still respects authority and a firmly defined social order. After World War II, when Yi Inguk finds himself with an opportunity to leave the country for America, he is not hesitant to use his conciliatory skills to ingratiate himself with the new authority. As he'd learned Japanese, and then Russian, he learns to speak English. He thinks to himself, "Revolutions my come and the nation change hands, but the way out has never been blocked for Yi Inguk."

Like all great stories, there is an inherent ambiguity to the situation: Is Yi Inguk to be admired for his survival skills, or condemned for betraying the notion of Korean sovereignty? Is he a stand-in for the national character of Korea, or a straw-man for a class of citizens not to be found any more? Further reading is necessary.

Kapitan Ri can be found in the collection Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction.